Davis,
Jefferson (b. June
3, 1808; d. December 5, 1889) U.S. representative and senator, Mexican War hero,
and president of the Confederate States of America.)

Jefferson Davis, best
known as president of the Confederate States of America, is credited with
shaping the Confederacy and leading it in the War for Southern Independence. In
the years before the war, he served as Mississippi representative and senator,
and was also a hero in the Mexican War. The defeat of Davis's Confederacy
reshaped American society and government as well as the U.S. Constitution.

Born in a porting of
Christian County, (which
was afterwards set off as Todd county),Kentucky, June 3,
1808 to Samuel
Emory Davis, a
Revolutionary War solider and a farmer of modest means,
Jefferson Davis moved to Mississippi as a child and is most identified with that
state, which was then on the frontier. He was educated at Transylvania
College and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point,
graduating in 1828. Afterward, he was an army officer, serving in the infantry
and the dragoons in the Northwest (now Wisconsin and Michigan) and Southwest
(now Oklahoma), until 1835. He resigned to marry his first wife Sallie Knox Taylor,
daughter of President Zachary Taylor,
who died soon after their marriage. He then became a
successful cotton planter at Davis Bend, near Vicksburg, Mississippi. He
married Varina Howell in 1845, and they eventually
had six children, only one of whom survived to marry
and have children of her own.

In the early 1840s Davis
became interested in politics and joined the DemocraticParty,
of which he was to be a lifelong member. He was in his first term in the House
of Representatives when he was elected to lead a volunteer regiment in the
Mexican War. As colonel of the Mississippi Rifles he fought heroically in the
Battle of Monterrey and again in the Battle of Buena Vista, where he was
seriously wounded. Soon after Davis returned home in 1847, the governor of
Mississippi appointed him to represent Mississippi in the Senate, and he was
soon elected to that position. He was an effective chairman of the
Military
Affairs Committee and a strong defender of Southern interests, including the
extension of slavery. In 1851 he ran for governor, losing in a very close race.
In 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed him secretary of war. He was a
success in this position, upgrading the course of study at West Point,
increasing the size of the army and its pay, surveying various possible routes
to the Pacific for railroads, importing camels for army
use in the deserts of the West, and supervising many construction projects in
Washington, such as the new dome for the Capitol and the Washington Aqueduct. He
also took a great interest inscientific
inventions and was a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution.

Jefferson Davis

In 1861, while Davis was
serving as senator, Mississippi voted to secede from the United States. Davis
left Washington reluctantly to follow his state. He hoped for a high military
appointment in the Confederate army, but because of his experience in politics
he was elected president of the new nation. During the four years of the War for
Southern Independence, he was devoted to the Confederate cause. Despite his
dedication, he was criticized for being too concerned with details, too rigid,
and too loyal to old friends; but he won admiration for his military skills, his
convictions, his honesty and integrity, and his choice of Robert E. Lee to
command the Army of Northern Virginia. Davis's overriding belief in the power of
the states over that of the central government proved quite a stumbling block
when he found himself in charge of a national administration, the strength of
which was essential to waging war.

During the conflict, the
South was overwhelmed by the North's much larger resources in manpower, money,
and industry. The protection and extension of the institution of slavery, which
white Southerners believed key to their economy and way of life, were the
underlying reasons for war. In the end, these goals proved indefensible, both
practically and morally. Also, the existence of slavery made it all but
impossible to secure the foreign aid from England or France, along with other
foreign nations, which would have helped the South.

In April 1865 Union
forces seized Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Davis fled southward
but was captured
May 10, 1865, at Irwinsville, Georgia.
He was indicted for treason and for a time was believed to be involved in the
plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, evidence showed he and his administration
had no involvement. Imprisoned for two years, Davis was never tried and was
stripped of his U.S. citizenship. He traveled, became
the president of the
Carolina Life Insurance Company in Memphis, Tennessee,
and retired to live in Biloxi, Mississippi living at his estate known as
Beauvoir. Over the
next three years he wrote his memoirs, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government (1881),
visited Europe and traveled to Alabama and Georgia the following year. In
October 1889 he completed A Short History of the Confederate States of
America. Two months later, December 6
he died in New Orleans Louisianan. There he remains laid in state at Confederate
Memorial Hall and buried temporarily at Metairie Cemetery. On May 27, 1893 his
remains were recovered and the vision of Mrs. Jefferson (Varina) Davis, which
she had three years earlier, came to reality when a funeral train with military
escort was secured for a 1,200 mile funeral train trip from New Orleans to be
buried at
Hollywood Cemetery,
Richmond, Virginia. He received posthumously his citizenship of the united
States of America when President Jimmy Carter signed S.J. Res. 16 as Public Law
95-466, on October 17, 1978.

Virtualology’s Museum
of History A preeminent exhibition dedicated to researching and recording the
historic account of human accomplishment, essence, beliefs, attitudes, vision,
and goals. http://www.jeffersondavis.net/